The days of your website being restricted to a physical server are long gone, with people now considering the switch to cloud hosting. Many can reel the benefits of cloud hosting off the top of their head, though not everyone is certain if such a move will positively impact their website's search engine page ranking. For businesses, the bottom line of any change to their website is getting more customers, improved visibility and revenue, whereas anything else is just a fringe benefit.

"In today's increasingly competitive world, something as simple as where your website is hosted can be the deciding factor in the success or failure of your business, and it is important that you gain the competitive advantage by making the right choice", according to an SEO specialist from Domains4less.

If you're considering a move to cloud hosting, then you need to understand how it will interact with your website's SEO. This brings us back to the question:

How does cloud hosting affect your website's SEO?

Improved page loading speed

We all know that Google owns the largest share of the search engine market; it's not called the search engine giant for nothing! If you aren't new to web design and hosting, you'll also know that one of the factors that influences Google search page ranking is speed. Essentially, a faster website means better SEO.

There are several factors that can affect the speed of a website: server location, poor infrastructure, and even something as simple as bad wires and faulty connection. In cloud hosting, these problems are eliminated. The results are a faster page load speed, enhanced website performance and subsequently, improvement in SEO. Needless to say, a faster website will attract more visitors, as very few people are willing to spend their time waiting for a web page to load.

Additionally, cloud hosting has the ability to accommodate a sudden increase in traffic, which will otherwise cause your website to slow down or stop responding altogether.

Zero reliance on location

If you're an old hand on the internet, you will know that search engines like Google and Bing consider geography in their search results. Search engines place websites hosted locally higher in their results page. This is why most business owners opt for a ccTLD pertaining to the country where their target market is. For example, an ecommerce website targeting only the German market would prefer to use a .DE suffix in order to rank higher for local search. If a user in Germany is searching for a product, websites with a .DE suffix will appear more than the .COM variety.

This whole process is needless with cloud hosting, because websites hosted on the cloud are not tied to any single location. A consulting firm in London will not have to worry about losing out on customers in France because of server location. This makes it easy for your company to expand its services on the internet and reach any corner of the globe.

Reduced server downtime

The more your website experiences downtime, the more points you lose from search engine rankings. Search engines hate downtime and it affects your SEO negatively. If your website goes down because of server downtime, it will be difficult for search engines to crawl. Downtime also means that visitors will not be able to access your website.

Cloud servers have a lot of fail-safes put in place to make sure that your website is always live. They are more reliable than regular servers and have numerous ways of backing up your data to ensure consistent uptime. When your website is available for users to access, and search engines can easily crawl your pages, you'll enjoy significant increase in SEO and website traffic.

Protection against BOTs and malicious programs

I dislike bots, you most probably dislike bots, while search engines also dislike bots.

Hackers make use of bots to circumvent the security of your website in order to carry out malicious activities such as DDoS and data theft.

Spambots visit your website and leave behind malicious posts and marketing links in your comments section. These comments and links can significantly reduce the authority ranking of your website if found by search engines.

More and more people are increasingly accessing online content on their mobile devices. It is therefore vital your website is able to meet the demands for both desktop and mobile users. While there are several ways to make your website responsive, it's also important for you to provide a platform that performs well and loads fast. This is where cloud hosting has the advantage. When compared to regular hosting, cloud hosting provides better uptime, which will deliver improved performance across all devices.

One key advantage of cloud hosting is the possibility to scale. Scaling eliminates the possibility of poor performance or downtime, as you can easily add more resources to accommodate an increase in traffic. You also scale down on your resources during off-peak periods and subsequently reduce your overheads.

If you host your website on the cloud, you'll have access to advanced analytics about your mobile traffic that you can use to plan your SEO strategy.

Conclusion

Cloud services have significantly changed the way business is conducted on the internet. Switching over to cloud hosting is definitely an upward move for every business. With the recent surge in popularity, it's safe to assume that it's here to stay.

Even though there are many ways businesses can improve their SEO ranking (including web design) one certain shortcut is switching to a cloud host. It provides the most advanced method of improving any company's online presence and can guarantee the improvements needed to increase revenue.